


this is the path

by theredtailedhawkwithjewelsforeyes



Category: The Witcher (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Depersonalization, Disassociation, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Jaskier | Dandelion Needs a Hug, M/M, Multi, a sort of cosmic disconnect from yourself, ive decided its recovery exclamation point, mentions of disordered eating, recovery question mark?, unreliable narrator by nature of jaskier being jaskier, yennefer is like. i mean im sorry but shes vibing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-19
Updated: 2020-01-19
Packaged: 2021-02-27 10:14:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,877
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22325392
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theredtailedhawkwithjewelsforeyes/pseuds/theredtailedhawkwithjewelsforeyes
Summary: The bard is a carefully constructed facade who is as real as anything, and Jaskier is the truth.
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion
Comments: 90
Kudos: 931
Collections: Interesting Character and/or Interesting Relationship Development





	this is the path

**Author's Note:**

> if anyone is wondering i will not stop snipping out lines of 'her sweet kiss' to use as titles until i am out of lines to snip

A creature, not quite real, traveling far from a home that doesn’t want it. 

The bard is not like his Witcher, except in the ways that he is. They are both wandering, they are both lonely, they are both quietly unwanted. The bard hides it in sweet singing and the Witcher hides it in grunts, and they both feel the pang of it buried in their gut. 

Jaskier is not like his Witcher. The bard is loud and fragile. He is two parts in one cracked whole. He is a meal pushed to the side, traded for coin, traded for a lie. He is a song written out in a shaking hand. He is a voice breaking and everyone pretending not to hear it. 

A pretense. A false creature with plumage of pretty silks, travel-worn. Faded kisses on his throat from when the bard was so solitary it burned. A solid block of emptiness inside him disguised by a masquerade smile. 

He has felt tired for his entire life. A whole world of pushing onwards, well aware he is a tiny piece in a great moving machine. A silly false face covering nothing. He does not cry at night because he doesn’t feel enough and he talks on autopilot. He is not in control of his body. He is sitting in the corner of his mind, watching the stars, thinking when will this be over? 

(He imagines that a lot of people are like this. He wonders what it would be like if they took off their faces as a collective, all at once, sucking people into their voids. He wonders how free he would feel and he wonders if he would feel anything at all.)

He does not eat because he is not hungry. He is small and alone. He follows after those who will have him and those who won’t and familiarizes himself with the copper taste of a broken nose. He soaks in bright pain. He fucks the noble’s wife so he will be slashed, bright red, with a sword. He drinks until his vision blurs. He latches onto those who call himself his friend for the night with his whole soul, needy, grasping, lets them go when they’re out of sight and never thinks of them again.

He knows a Witcher, vaguely. He has traveled with him for a week and been left behind. He thinks about him idly, a slow plod of hooves clip-clopping across his mind, and knows that he is not thought of in return. He doesn’t need to be thought of in return. He finds bright copper on his own. 

-

Helpless, hapless wandering with perhaps a touch of destiny thrown in, if he believed in that sort of stuff. He meets the Witcher again, fawns over him with his mouth and studies him with his eyes. Slow, gentle tiredness in his chest- he couldn’t sleep last night, the night before. He sticks to his side again, pretends away his buckling knees and complains at length about the hot sun on his back. Misdirection is wasted on those who don’t care but no one cares and he doesn’t care so he does it anyways. He studies his fingernails, grown long without him noticing, and he rips them away and watches them bleed. The world spins and Jaskier can feel it if he closes his eyes for long enough, and so he doesn’t. 

Jaskier is not like his Witcher, except in the way he is. He can see the way, tucked in the corner of his mind, they are both pretending for each other, how they both pretend not to pretend. How they are pretending to themselves. He sees his mouth open, empty chatter coming out. He sees Witcher-gold eyes sharpen and dull again, noise cracking through to his core. He wonders, vaguely, how Geralt got to be this way. The bard calls him ‘darling Witcher’ and sees a twist, unhappy, at the corner of his mouth. Waits for copper. Doesn’t get it. 

For all of his violence, the Witcher is a gentle man. Careful of his strength if not his words. Jaskier notes that down and pushes, pushes, pushes. Cruel, maybe, if the intention behind it was anything but curiosity. Cruel anyways, perhaps. He is not exempt from the rules because he does not care. Still he presses, a slim finger on a purple bruise. He gets himself into trouble and watches curiously when the Witcher is afraid. 

-

A note: the bard is Jaskier as much as Jaskier is the bard. They are seperated twins. They are two creatures together in the same head, sharing the same body. The bard is a chatty thing without depth and Jaskier is tucked back away, emptiness solidified. The bard is a carefully constructed facade who is as real as anything, and Jaskier is the truth.

The bard loves Geralt so much it hurts, in the part of him that can. 

-

It is hard to describe who he really is and who he is when people are watching. Jaskier is not a person but he is a body and a mind. The bard is not real and he is a mouth who talks and a heart who loves. Independent falsehoods, neither fully in charge, neither wanting to be. He has somehow made a Witcher care for a mask. He wonders what would happen if he took it off. 

-

The bard plays, jumping cheerfully from table to table. He soaks up the attention and it dissipates when it reaches blood and bone. He gets coin and spends it on a pretty dagger, a sweet cake, something that makes him feel a little fizz of something for a moment. Over just as quickly. 

He sits at Geralt’s side. The bard leans in close, preening and pleased, and Jaskier reluctantly allows the Witcher in. A violent man, but gentle. A nudge of vague affection, popping sparks in Jaskier’s smouldering campfire. He has never allowed anybody to get so close before. He has never let anybody into his blood. Purple bruise, spread to him like a sickness. Jaskier prods at it just the same and is surprised at the pain. He has not felt that inside himself for so long. 

-

Jaskier and the bard are the same person. They are different people. Jaskier opens his eyes and finds himself on the forest floor, head aching. 

His comfortable shield is gone. 

He has let a Witcher in and when he tore himself out it was his ruin. Foolish. He plucks at his lute for something to do and his fingers are clumsy, unpracticed. He has never been one person, Jaskier-Bard. He has always been protectively tucked behind his wall. It is strange and new, to be looking up at the world through his own tired eyes. Familiar, foregin hands. A deep ache in his chest that he can feel. The scream of hunger. The bite of sadness. He studies himself, all sharp angles, and understands he is in his body. How frightening it is, he thinks, to be yourself after so many years of being apart from that. 

When he cries it’s hot, salty, bursts of sensation on his cheeks and his tongue. 

-

Jaskier feels as though he is waking up from a dream. It was a long dream, and not very good, except for the parts that were. He misses his dream-Witcher. He has his finger on a purple bruise, pressing, pressing, pressing. The taste of copper on his tongue makes him scream and so he drinks it like wine. Everything is so, so bright, and dull, and his emptiness is physical. He has woken up, and he wants to go back to sleep. 

He lies awake at night and feels. Food sits too heavy in his stomach. He tries to write, because the bard writes songs, and it makes him feel like screaming. He is screaming. He sits in the forest, his fire burnt out, looks up at the stars and feels them looking back. Nothing, nothing, nothing. Everything, everything, everything. He is sick to his stomach with it. He is ripping at his wrists and sobbing at the feeling. 

Jaskier-bard drinks, and when it hits his empty stomach there is a pleasant sort of familiarity. A sweet wash of nothing. He does not eat and he drinks. He has bones, physical, and he presses his fingers into them. Solid. A wish, spoken soft to the ceiling, to go back to how it was. 

-

He remembers, eyes closed tightly, sitting behind a Witcher on his horse. He cannot breathe, and the bard is panicked but Jaskier is quiet. He hooks a clumsy finger into a strap on the Witcher’s back, and the point of contact is the only thing in the world. He focuses on that, closes his eyes, ignores the bard’s fear and gasping. Jaskier is a finger hooked into a rough leather strap. He is quiet and small. The Witcher is afraid for him. He doesn’t care. He cares so much it burns at him, but that is not him, that is the bard, and the bard is false. 

-

Jaskier is awake. Jaskier lies on a bed at an inn, and there is a man on top of him biting at his neck. It hurts, and it is a reminder that he is awake. He does not mind it but he minds it. A spiral running into itself. Another inn, another man. They do not mind the wild look in his eyes. Perhaps they have seen it before. Perhaps he is just a warm body and there is no one to know but him that he has split together, paradoxically. 

-

He sees the witch before he sees the Witcher again. He hates her. She is lovely and alive, purple-eyed and dangerous. She sees him and her eyes narrow, and then she looks into him and there is a moment. Two moments. Three. 

He hates her, he thinks. The bard hated her and he is the bard, but he is more than that. Less than that. She takes his arm, pulls him none-too-gently to where she is staying. A large room, almost grandiose. Rich velvet draped everywhere. She says, “ _ sit _ , you fool,” and “I am not here to take care of stupid bards, I am doing this because I know your Witcher would never forgive me if I don’t”. She says: “you look like hell”. Jaskier has not spoken to anyone in a long time. He opens his mouth and the words come out rusty. 

“The bard hated you,” he says, voice soft. She looks at him like he’s mad. Perhaps he is. He supposes it’s unusual to think of yourself as true and false. 

He woke up. He has bruises on his neck and his wrists and he doesn’t remember how to eat. It is not because of the Witcher that he’s like this but it is because of the Witcher that he is awake. He tells her this and she just looks at him. 

She makes him sleep. She makes him eat. He is learning how to be human again.

She does not want him here and still she lets him stay. It is uncommonly kind. His bruises heal as he lays curled up under a heavy fur blanket and listens to her talk. 

“I didn’t expect you of all people to be a good listener,” she tells him, one of those rare smiles quirking her full lips. Jaskier shrugs. His voice is rusty and his jaw does not like to open these days. Slim fingers pet through his hair- Yennefer pities him. That’s fine. He is an easily pitiable creature, weak and human and shattered glass. She asks him, again, what happened. He says nothing happened. She looks at him, purple eyes, dark hair. 

He doesn’t know. He remembers being a child, running away. Being hungry, hungry, hungry. Hands around a lute. Tucking himself safely away when he decided that he didn’t like who he was- making Jaskier, making the bard. He had been an angry child and he had wanted to be happy. The world was not as cruel to him as it could be but it was not kind. 

“You coped,” the witch says. There is pity and disgust twisting her lips- when she went through fire, she came out stronger. Jaskier had crackled into ash. Some people are made of stronger stuff. She pushes his hair back from his forehead, almost fond, and says again: “you coped. You did your best.” 

Jaskier is Jaskier. He is a person. He had been asleep for twenty years, everything happening in dreams, and now he is awake, and human. He is doing his best. 

-

He does not follow Yennefer when she goes, because she has important things to do, but she visits. It is nice to see her even though the bard used to hate her. He pulls the bard out to sing, begins writing songs again although they’re different and strange and lonely. He blinks blinks blinks himself into something that looks normal and feels odd. He has not had to consider the things he does in so long that it is foregin. His mask is flimsy and rips as soon as he puts it on.

But he is learning. 

-

Yennefer tells him: “Come on, bard.” 

“Where are we going?” Jaskier asks, already packing his things. She looks irritated, soft in the eyes. Yen has a gentle core and she wants everything. Violet burning down a forest. Jaskier has written her a song and played it, sweet and violent, in a hundred taverns. He still plays the songs his dream-self had written for his dream-Witcher, but the words taste strange in his mouth. 

He let Geralt in and Geralt ripped himself out and woke him up. That is bitter. The lyrics are copper, bright and red. 

(He doesn’t blame the Witcher. Jaskier had a finger on that purple bruise, pressing pressing pressing, curious. What had happened had hurt and it had hurt both of them, probably. It had made Jaskier a whole creature.) 

He blinks himself back into the moment. Memories are very tangible to him now that he is awake. Yennefer had told him it gave him a wise, thoughtful air, but she had been laughing when she said it. Her laugh makes him smile, sometimes, sparks happiness somewhere in his chest. He blinks blinks blinks. “Where are we going,” he’d asked, maybe a minute ago, maybe three, and he tilts his head for the answer. Yennefer rolls her eyes, takes his wrist, leads him through one of her portals into a fresh, snowy mountain pass. 

There, in front of him: Geralt. Not a dream. A little girl with golden hair beside him. He blinks blinks blinks. Geralt is tall and his shoulders are broad and he looks weary. Jaskier looks over his shoulder for the portal and it isn’t there- it doesn’t surprise him, but it surprises him. One moment, warm and learning at the place he’s decided to call home. The next, here. Like a dream. 

Not a dream. Geralt is here in front of him. Yennefer is beside him, fingers tight around his wrist. How many years has it been? Jaskier opens his mouth. 

“It’s about fucking time.” 

A laugh startled from the Witcher, from the witch at his side. The little girl looks up at him and smiles too, and her eyes remind him of his own. Wild, somehow. She will be a queen. He smiles back. 

-

Jaskier is sitting on a bench. His lute is in his hands and he is playing, absently. His eyes are not focused as he looks at the floor, but he is not thinking of anything else besides that it is warm in here and he can hear the rumble of Geralt’s voice somewhere nearby. It is soothing. Half dream and half the real life he has found. A comfortable merging. 

Cirilla is sitting next to him, watching him unabashedly like children do. He blinks blinks blinks himself out of unfocused daydreaming and tilts his head to look at her. 

“You’re not like Geralt described you at all,” she says, finally. He blinks blinks blinks. 

“He’s talked about me?” 

Ciri rolls her eyes, looking terrifically longsuffering for a girl of fourteen. He remembers, many years ago, when Geralt had claimed the Law of Surprise. It had seemed terrifying to the bard at the time. It’s not so bad now. Geralt is an awkward man and no natural father but he is trying his very best, and it’s enough. Jaskier blinks blinks blinks. Ciri pats his knee. “You two deserve each other,” she says, and he smiles a little without knowing why. 

-

He walks in between Yennefer and Geralt. Solid presences on either side, comforting where he once might have felt nothing. He is taller than the witch and yet she is a wall that blocks out everything on his left- the Witcher is as granite as ever. Walking steady. The princess rides beside them all on Geralt’s horse. 

Jaskier feels an odd burst of something in his chest. This group, these people- they feel as inevitable as anything in the world. More real than the earth beneath his feet. 

He smiles. 

**Author's Note:**

> it's literary, it's a metaphor, it's a dramatized version of me waking up in early morning light on a sunday when im sure i only just closed my eyes a second ago and thinking: has anything i've ever experienced been real? am i real? is the mask i put on an entirely different beast from the me right now?
> 
> THAT BEING SAID. im just vibing. i'd say this was a fix-it for episode six, but it's far too self indulgent and project-y for that. regardless i hoped you like it a little 
> 
> if you Did please consider shooting me an ask on redjewelsforeyes.tumblr.com and also commenting! a comment smoothes my skin and breathes life into my lungs


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